She wasn’t quite sure what was keeping her awake - the uncomfortable bed in Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta’s guest bedroom that caused her to toss and turn every few minutes or so, the photo of a beaming Peter and Susan on her nightstand that served as a reminder that they were off on wonderful adventures while she and Edmund were stuck in Cambridge with their horrid extended family, or the painting of a ship on the wall that was a punch to the stomach every time she glanced up at it because it reminded her of a place she couldn’t get to.
Perhaps it was all three, simultaneously.
She yawned and blinked her eyes, which were starting to sting as a result of being awake for longer than she intended to be. She knew laying awake and staring at the ceiling wouldn’t do any good, so she stood up and quietly made her way to the bedroom door. Peeking out, she could see that there was no one in sight and the house was completely silent.
The floorboards in the Scrubb household tended to squeak very easily, so Lucy was careful not to be too loud or too clumsy as she tiptoed down the stairs. She wondered if a nice cup of tea would help her fall asleep. It was a trick she learned from Susan, who slept less and less after she last returned from Narnia. The two would stay up together seated at the kitchen table and talk. Susan always had a variety of conversation topics to choose from, whether it be a rumour about a teacher at school or new gossip that had started to float around her friend group. Lucy never found much joy in what Susan rambled on about, but had to admit that some of it was quite funny, and often found herself stifling giggles with her sister so as to not wake their parents or their brothers.
She shuffled into the kitchen and bumped into someone’s shoulder. Panic set in for a moment, thinking it was her aunt or uncle or cousin, but was replaced with relief soon after upon the revelation that it was Edmund.
“Ed?” She hissed. “What’re you doing up?”
“Our cousin snores like a bloody freight train,” He replied, reaching up into the cupboard. “And I’m hungry.”
She noticed him grab a handful of chocolates, ones that Aunt Alberta had carefully stowed away so that Eustace wouldn’t get at them.
“I saw her rummaging through this cupboard yesterday,” Edmund remarked, unwrapping one of the chocolates in front of Lucy. “I knew exactly where she hid them. She’s not as sly as she thinks she is.”
Lucy couldn’t help but snort at that as she retrieved the milk and sugar for her tea. When she had finished stirring it to her liking, she shuffled towards the kitchen table and sat down across from Edmund.
“Would you like one, Lu?” He offered, sliding one toward her.
“Yes, please.” She smiled, unwrapping it and putting it in her mouth. Her brows furrowed as she chewed it, unsure of the taste and the texture. It definitely wasn’t the type of chocolate she was used to eating in Finchley. Then again, she wasn’t surprised. Aunt Alberta always had a knack for odd foods others couldn’t quite stomach.
She immediately took a sip of her tea after swallowing the small piece of chocolate. “Oh, these are awful.”
“I don’t mind them.” Edmund chuckled.
“I do.” Lucy snickered.
The two sat quietly laughing for a while, and Lucy suddenly forgot the unease and upset she felt earlier. Sitting here, in the dark, laughing with her brother, erased all of that.
“Tell Aunt Alberta I ate these and you’ll owe me.”
Peter stands in the ruin of Cair Paravel, his palace, his kingdom, and the years come crashing down on his shoulders. A year since he and his siblings went missing, fifteen years as High King, centuries since he last stood where he stands now. Lucy seems near tears, Edmund angry, and Susan just looks sorry.
The treasure room was the last straw; sixteen steps to the bottom and their gifts from Father Christmas hanging on the wall and the “do you remember” of the whole place was almost more than any of them could bear. The thrill of realizing it was Cair Paravel had been dulled by how many years it must have been since they lived there. Their friends must be long gone, even if the apple trees–apple trees they planted, just before the Calormen ambassador came–are still here.
“This is my sword, Rhindon,” Peter says. “With it I killed the wolf.” From his siblings’ expressions he knows that his voice is more that of the High King than of Peter Pevensie from Finchley. There is magic in the air, and even if he looks more or less as he did when they were in the railway station, Narnia’s magic is working on him in other ways.
Sheathing his sword, he follows his siblings out of the treasure chamber and helps Edmund to build a fire without thinking about it. He bids Lucy good night automatically and stretches out with his back to the fire.
They must have been summoned.
Lucy’s finding the wardrobe was not a mistake, or if it was, it was because the wardrobe was a doorway. Railway platforms do not turn into woods all on their own. That had been magic. The woods are silent; something must be terribly wrong in Narnia. Cair Paravel was attacked, but Peter and his siblings were not called when that attack took place, so why now?
As much as he turns it over in his head, he can’t make sense of it. It isn’t logical, but perhaps it doesn’t need to be. It’s not logical that the stars are any different from England, but they’re still more familiar from his years spent studying and watching with the centaurs. Looking up into the Narnian sky, he notes that Tarva and Alambil are in close conjunction. If Peter had to guess, the great conflict indicated has yet to take place, and that is what he and Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are here to aid Narnia in.
Under the stars, on the cold, stony ground that was once theirs, Peter silently vows to put Narnia to rights, whatever necessary.
“You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not harmless. You are not breathing.” ― Richard Siken, Crush
your mother once told you that the world does not stop for your terror. now, it looks at you from within needle-sharp teeth and trembling breaths. now, it looks at you as though you are not still choking on paint, as though this world, and all its salt, is home now to you as it is to your cousins and their laughing mouths, pulled taut by longing.
your mother is clutching the phone again. “helen”, she says, her voice soft, her knuckles white, “there’s something wrong with your children.” you don’t hear her answer, but your mother hangs up, her lips pursed. she doesn’t look at you. in his chair, your father turns a page.
your lungs are still lined with sea salt, you see. your skin is still stretched over the hollow of your bones, you see. your teeth are dull. your hair is dripping with water, still. it collects at your clavicles, and at the bottom of your feet. below you, the wooden floor rots. your mother doesn’t look at you.
your father turns a page.
your nails are weak, and dull. your stomach lies, clawed open and empty, under the stretch of your ribs. come, child. press a hand against your chest. can you feel your heart beating still?
in the mornings, before your mother comes to open all the windows and all the doors, with a sharp mouth and sharper hands, your cousins lie curled into one another. she is the inhale to his exhale, his fingers on her pulse point, her ear pressed against his chest. to the twin-beats of their hearts, they lie in this home full of teeth. she reaches for you.
your skin peels from you in welts. your teeth shed from you from the roots upwards. the world tilts and levels and stops.
“stand up straight”, your mother says as the world around you melts into a swirl of colour and sound, the corners of her mouth tilted upwards, “the world won’t stop for you.” and England never has. rounded and full of edges and full of cousins with secrets hidden in their smiles, it kept on turning, no matter how much you ripped open your skin trying to make it stop.
but this world is flat. this world lies, unmoving, with the ocean flowing from it on all sides. this world stops. your cousins bloom, here. your world changes, here.
*
take your skin. take your nails and your teeth and your shoulder blades. don’t pull at them. don’t pick at them. look into that mirror and don’t flinch. look at your cousins and the way they never really stop touching, tucked into a space they’ve carved into this England. look at this world and don’t ache for mouses who have long since walked off the edge of it.
*
when you first meet susan, she is carefully wrapped in petticoats. her lips are painted scarlet, her dress fans out when she turns. from within her smile, you can still see the weight of the world and how it has long since worn them dull.
she looks at you. if you tilt your head right, you can see the constellation caspian had sailed after in them. under your nails, your skin breaks. under your teeth, your gums break. susan doesn’t reach for you. she takes a cup and a lighter. she lights the stove and starts spooning coffee into the coffee machine. peter kisses her bare shoulder. she wraps a hand around his wrist.
and then she turns to look at you. her skirt sways. “i’m sorry”, she says. her voice is soft, and untrembling, and you can hear edmund in it. he hits his rs the same way. you cannot stop looking at her. there is not a freckle on her skin.
from within her, the world looks at you, still and unmoving. Untrembling, with her hair in perfect curls, the world has stopped for you. your feet are wet. the water drips from your fingertips. the fire drips from your lungs into the hollow of your ribs. you do not respond.
would you even know how to?
*
the war still sits in all your bones, see. it’s not the same war that has burrowed itself under your skins. or rather, your cousins have wars hidden in their gums that you cannot conceptualise. there are tremors in their hands and sharp edges in their jaws. your mother purses her lips when susan cooks coffee in the mornings, and spends hours nursing just one cup of it. peter lies his head in her lap, edmund takes the curlers out of her hair and lines them up on the kitchen table. lucy sits outside, with her head tilted upwards, with her bare feet on the grass.
and susan looks at you.
until your skin crawls, she looks at you, with her dark eyes and her smiling mouth.
edmund kisses the top of her head, and peter snores softly. susan cups her coffee with both hands and leans forwards.
come on. take a breath. and then another.
this is it.
“i’m sorry”, she says again. “it will never be the same again, after you’ve been there. there’s no going back for us. it changes you, and turns you inside out. and then you’re back here and nothing feels right.”
behind her, the kettle boils.
*
susan pevensie has the world in her smile. from within the red stretch of her, it breathes, and it lies, frozen, until you might be pulled back into it. when you are, you will have to leave them here, with the boiling kettle. with the world turning, still. it doesn’t stop for their terror, see.
here, you’re all just children. here, there is something wrong with the edges of your teeth. here, your cousin wraps herself in girdles and petticoats and draws a line on the back of her legs with kohl. somewhere in the bones of her lies a queen.
